Other Links
Cars | Carbon Offsetting | Links to info on Energy – atomic, wind, solar, gasification of coal, biofuel etc | Info on food, clothing, fair trade, organic shade grown coffee and tea, organic produce, organic chocolate, organic flowers etc | Other
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About 25% of CO2 we put into the atmosphere comes from vehicles exhaust fumes. There is also a massive footprint associated with the production of vehicles.
Many companies are trying to reduce both their manufacturing footprint (e.g. Toyota starting to use plastics made from renewable plant plantations), as well as create cleaner running cars (e.g. Hybrids, pure electrical etc).
There are also issues around the use of Diesel. Diesel is seen by many to be better than petrol as you get more km per tank. There are several other problems though:
- In South Africa we still have extremely high sulphur content in our Diesel - only in 2010 are we moving to the latest current international standards
- In South Africa we still have extremely high sulphur content in our Diesel - only in 2010 are we moving to the latest current international standards
In the Reduce Reuse Recycle section read up on the thoughts around replacing an old fuel inefficient car (which is probably also spewing out oil etc)
Plug in conversion for electric hybrids, from A123, the MIT spinoff who invented nano tech based batteries: http://www.a123systems.com/hymotion
As an individual you can donate money to organisations that have carbon offset programs - usually planting trees (although this method is under dispute - trees just store carbon and release it when they die, and trees reflect heat back into the atmosphere)
Some organisations are:
Links to info on Energy – atomic, wind, solar, gasification of coal, biofuel etc
- Scottish Wave Farmhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/ 02/20/scottish_wave_farm/
- http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/ August 2006 issue, Tower of Power for proposed solar tower in Australia
- MIT http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17069&ch=biztech current wind turbines supply 3.6 megawatts each. New ones planed for 2009 will supply 5-7 megawatts
- Garbage to gas http://news.com.com/Garbage-to-gas+system+makes+its+debut/2110-1008_3-6129245.html?tag=nefd.hed
- New Biofuel system http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/ethanol.html
- EEStore – new electric car system http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/15/technology/ disruptors_eestor.biz2/index.htm
Unfortunately this list is mainly US products. Please let us know if you have products in South Africa
- http://www.ethical.org.za/ - Cape Town
- http://www.wildorganics.co.za/ - Western Cape South Africa based organic food suppliers
- http://www.utne.com/ various
- http://www.organic.org/ for lots of information and products
- www.coffeeandtealtd.com – coffee and tea
- www.greenmountaincoffee.com – coffee
- www.peacecoffee.com - coffee
- www.dagobachocolate.com – chocolate
- www.chocolatebar.com - chocolate
- www.savvyrest.com – mattresses
- http://www.fairindigo.com/ for fair-trade clothing
- Flyscreens (better than spraying and less mess than strips) http://www.windovert.co.za
- Cotton nappies: http://www.stegi.co.za/web/index.htm . Note this is not organic cotton, and cotton is very water and herbicide intensive to produce.
- http://fightglobalwarming.com/
- http://flood.firetree.net/ to see how see level rise will affect you (Google Earth mashup using NASA data)
- http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics is a great wiki site that talks about all the sceptics arguments against climate change.
- Online Kids resource around sustainability http://www.ollierecycles.com/
- http://www.wecansolveit.org/ - campaign to fix the global warming problem